People

Jess grew up in Brunei, where she gained a profound interest and appreciation for natural environments. She holds a Bachelors of Science and Diploma by Research Methods in Aquaculture, which reflect her interests in sustainable and alternative livelihoods for coastal communities. After completion of these studies, she then focused her research towards the conservation of marine environments, undertaking her PhD with Bob Pressey, Rebecca Weeks, and James Moloney at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, looking at the sensitivities of systematic conservation planning in marine environments to aspects of scale. This work spanned all stages in conservation planning processes that involve explicit decision related to scale, ranging from technical concerns in planning (e.g., data selection and identifying spatial priorities), to those more practical in nature (e.g., transitioning between different scales of planning and implementation, and integrating planning explicitly across multiple scales).